Blindsided by the winning “Leave” vote, global investors fled the market in search of safe havens such as gold, the Japanese yen, and U.S. Treasuries.
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The margin of victory was 52 percent to 48 percent.
But Derrick Wyatt QC, emeritus professor of law at Oxford University, told me that Mr Cameron might not have as much time as he had expected.
Helga Nowotny, former president of the European Research Council, summed up the sentiment for Science magazine: “It’s a bad day for Europe, the United Kingdom, and European science”. It is an unprecedented separation that could take far longer to complete.
“Let June 23 go down in our history as our independence day”, said top anti-EU campaigner Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, who had promised Britons the chance to retake power from Brussels and rein in high immigration. Washington will lose leverage in Europe, too, as it saw Britain – not France or Germany – as its most trusted partner across the Atlantic.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen now”, said Achim. “I’m offering my opinion”, Mr. Obama said at a press conference in London earlier this year. Britain’s main stock index, the FTSE 100, nosedived 8.7 percent to 5,790. Though the path forward is still unclear, it’s possible that they – along with hundreds of thousands more from elsewhere in Europe – may have to apply for work visas and, if rejected, have to leave the country.
European Union leaders met Saturday amid calls for Britain to begin negotiating its exit “immediately”. “I am fully aware of how serious, or even dramatic, this moment is politically”.
The British were warned for weeks that a vote to leave the European Union would result in economic pain. Johnson made no mention of the possibility of replacing Cameron as prime minister or leader of the Conservative Party.
“As a city, we are grateful for the enormous contribution you make, and that will not change as a result of this referendum”, he said.
Farouk Özgünes, from Flemish public broadcaster VTM said: “The suspects were planning to carry out attacks while the Red Devils were playing a match at the European Championships this weekend”. “Therefore, we will continue to fight for a stronger united Europe and pour new energy into the European integration process”.
President Barack Obama offered words of calm, saying the vote would disrupt neither the bonds between the USA and the United Kingdom nor American support for the European alliance. USA presidential candidate Donald Trump, whose own rise has been fuelled by similar anger at the political establishment, called the vote a “great thing”. Exit backers argued that severing ties with the European Union is the only way to reduce a flood of migrants and protect the U.K.’s independence from burdensome economic and social regulation.
In his resignation statement, Cameron said any exit negotiation would take time to develop and would involve consultations with the other governments in the U.K. – Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It backfired. The class-conscious British also viewed their leaders and London itself as being in another world, more focused on playing a gilded role in global politics and finance than in taking care of constituents back home. There also could be a renewed attempt by Scotland to launch a second independence bid.
US President Barack Obama on Friday tried to limit the fallout from Britain’s vote to leave the European Union which threatens to harm the US economic recovery and distract US allies from global security issues. During his visit to the U.K.in April, the President had urged the people to vote for remaining in the EU.
“We have to follow the rules of the game”, she said Saturday.
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Yesterday’s historic decision by British voters to leave the European Union (EU) is already sending shockwaves throughout global markets and the worldwide business community. In the USA, within minutes of their opening bells, the Standard & Poor’s 500 lost 2.6 percent of its value and the Dow Jones industrial average fell nearly 3 percent.
